Community-based ecotourism and empowerment of indigenous people: the case of Yeak Laom community development, Cambodia

Abstract

Ecotourism, with its potential to generate income and employment and its promise to protect natural environment for local communities, has been considered an important agent for indigenous community development since the growth in demand for cultural tourism began in the early 1990s. It has been argued that, as a result of ecotourism, indigenous populations’ living standards and quality of life can be enhanced, and indigenous resources can be protected. In contrast, without community control, more often than not, ecotourism has contributed to unfair distribution of tourism benefits and deterioration of cultural and natural resources in indigenous communities. As a result, empowering indigenous communities to control ecotourism has been advocated as an integral component of sustainable tourism. In this sense, community-based ecotourism is often promoted as an effective mechanism for the empowerment of indigenous communities, allowing them to participate in decision making about, and control over, tourism development. This study evaluated the potential of the Yeak Laom Community-based Ecotourism development for empowering the indigenous Tampuan people who live adjacent to the Yeak Laom Protected Area, Ratanakiri, Cambodia. Key informant interviews, secondary data and survey questionnaires were used as research tools to examine collaborative efforts of key stakeholders to empower the Tampuan community to have control over, and assess the level of community participation in, the Yeak Laom Community-based Ecotourism development. This analysis also includes the evaluation of the perceptions of the Tampuan with regard to the impacts of the development on the economic, psychological, social and political lives of their people. The study results reveal that power re-distribution among the stakeholders involved in a collaborative process in Yeak Laom Community-based Ecotourism planning and implementation had the potential to be a crucial component in facilitating empowerment of the Tampuan community. The findings indicate that the Yeak Laom Community-based Ecotourism initiative was perceived as an important tool for enhancing the psychological, social and political empowerment of the Tampuan community, although the capacity of the project to contribute direct economic benefits to the community is limited. The thesis concludes that community-based ecotourism has the potential to contribute to a form of sustainable tourism for people living adjacent to protected natural areas when there is an effective collaboration with indigenous people. This is most effectively achieved when indigenous people have the ability to have control over, and make decisions about, the development based on their own interests.